Discovery of his Heartbreak
by hippiechick2112
Summary: Part two in a series of four, "Prelude to Danger". Christmas 1942 at Stalag 13 has brought Hogan back to reality, but also horrendous news of someone he knew for many years.
1. Christmastime, 1942

**Discovery of His Heartbreak**

**Note and Disclaimer:**** I'll be saying this every time. I don't own the characters to ****Hogan's Heroes****. I would like to thank those who have created this series. However, the character I have created in this series, Colonel Michalovich, belongs to me, so if you want to use her in any story you wish to write, please email me with permission first. Thank you!**

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It was the season of Christmastime already at Stalag 13, and Colonel Robert Hogan knew, as every commanding officer does, that the men were more excited over these holidays than the uptight missions that London had been assigning them. But in this cold German winter, nothing could be better for these special prisoners of war, who had been working secretly against the Germans in their elaborate underground tunnel system, than a day off from the war. A holiday bonded these men further, most from different Allied armies and traditions.

_These men must be tired of all of this already,_ Hogan thought to himself as he sat around in his quarters, doodling inanely on paper as he sat at his desk. _These missions drain all of us, and especially the Underground, but just when this war is over matters, and who wins. All the work cannot be for nothing_. Hogan knew that this great sacrifice his men were doing (indeed, all were volunteers, but handpicked for Stalag 13), for the good of the Allied Forces, would surely pay off sooner, if not later. He also knew, as every other man there, that they missed being within their comforts of home every time they went outside the camp. This season, much like the last one and the one before and even in 1939, was grim and less hopeful than before without family and friends about.

Hogan sat up from his desk in his private quarters and stared out of his window, fogged up from the cold. Already it was evening and through the searchlights that always hunt, like predators for its prey, for missing prisoners, he saw the beginnings of a snow storm, snowflakes floating through the penetrating beams. The snowflakes were even daring themselves to softly fall to the barren ground. It caused a pit in his stomach and he just as suddenly remembered something in his life that he missed most just at that moment, an aching feeling he always felt as he thought of what he wanted equally as much as his family: love.

Sure, Hogan had enough of that around. With all the women he worked with and all the flirtation he loved, there was always one woman that set him off, and they promised each other…at least he thought they were to be married after the war. He thought of her often enough, and when he missed her the most, he always knew where the pictures of her were; Hogan had carried them in the cockpit of his airplane when he was hunting for German places of security and their efforts of war; carried them as he crash-landed; he even carried them to this cold prison camp they placed him in where he put them deep into his footlocker.

Today, even in the middle of this first lonely Christmas season away from home, Hogan knew that, despite that argument that they had in London before he left her for good, so _that_ seemed, he loved her, no matter what he said about her. He remembered so well that last night in her quarters and how she argued against what she believed in: that she needed him and everyone she loved because of the past; she wanted them home and safe from what she considered being a storm, a survival of the fittest game. Her selfishness was duly noted and appreciated in this luck-of-the-draw game for life, even now.

"_What danger Rob? What does the Allied Underground want you to do this time?"_ she screamed in frustration as he tried to hold her down and get her to calm down. Her temper was well-known but her anxiety, plainly showing through her anger, was going to be harder to control.

He had tried to cover her mouth and she almost bit his hand because of the restraint he placed on her. It was plain enough that she was selfishly trying to protect him, as his mother did, because he was the last person she held in her heart that was with her. Hogan was one of the last people she held near and dear and her love blinded her to the truth._ "Nikki, Desertstar, we have to follow –"_

"_Those damned careless voices! The same voices that I have! I know dammed good and well what! What dangers? I can't follow you, and why?"_

Hogan could only smile at her temper, as he dimly recalled all the times that she threw her temper out, so much like her mother. _She's more like her stubborn mother than she realizes_, Hogan mused as he hopped down from his bunk and started for his footlocker, ignoring the cold view outside, opening it and rummaging through his codebooks, clothes and other things. He wasn't aware that he was throwing things behind him as he searched for those pictures.

_I wonder what she is doing right now. I know she followed me. Who else would be in Paris at that nightclub as Desertstar? What dangers has she placed herself in? Did she willingly follow me, or was she ordered to follow me? What happened to that medical unit she was working at?_ Hogan kept posing questions to himself and always pictured her happier than most times wherever she was, working her way through Paris for information and having better luck than he was right now. Hogan and his men were grounded for now, because of the Nazi's Christmas Offensive, and this pushed them back for about three weeks, at least; whatever she was doing was for the betterment of the Allied Forces. _What _does_ she do in that place?_ Hogan thought as he pictured the woman he loved, savoring that moment as he pictured her in a time so long ago, as he found what he was searching for.


	2. Lost Thoughts and Messages

Hogan got up to his feet and stood back to glare at the first picture he found in the small light that his quarters allowed him. He realized that it was the picture of her coming-of-age party that her Russian father held in their yard, which was next to where he lived…at least for a while, until she moved in with him after her father left America, on suspicion of being a Socialist and sending government secrets to the Russians. She was only sixteen years old in the picture Hogan held and she was already at the height of her womanhood in it, gorgeous in her long, conservative Russian summer dress and smiling at her father, who was holding his old, wizened hand out to her as she climbed down from the table she was standing on with that matchmaker. Her eventual movement down the table was frozen in time.

_God! Was she so innocent then or what? Ted was right in sitting out there and taking her pictures. How I wish I could have taken one of her face when she found them pasted around the house_. Hogan smiled at that particular memory. He recalled sneaking into her house as she was working outside and helping her father and his friends post them around the house, just to annoy her, and watching her grow in anger as she ripped one after another off the doors, walls and even off a mirror in her bedroom, cutting her arms as the mirror shattered in taking down the picture. (_Did she punch that mirror in anger?_) Her father and his friends could only laugh at her as she shredded every one of them down and then search for the one person who could have done such a thing to her, only to find Hogan missing and probably on the docks with his brothers fishing with the Navy captain who ported in Bridgeport, nicknamed "Magic." Hogan felt lucky, as he chuckled as he briefly recalled her stomping to the docks searching for him, that he saved a few precious photos of that day and kept them in a photo album for later use. He felt blessed to have seen her again, if only in a picture, in her beauty and forever encased in something.

His love could never end for her and both of them knew it well.

Hogan clutched that picture and was lost in his thoughts of her until a knock on the door suddenly disrupted his thoughts. Seeing his quarters a mess from everything being thrown about, Hogan quickly became paranoid about who was at the other side of that door. For all he knew, it could be the Gestapo…or it could be his men or even Schultz, the bumbling guard who watched his barracks. He couldn't take that chance to be caught with suspicious and messy barracks and was speedily hurling everything messily back into his footlocker before he could answer the door. After reassuring himself that everything was in order after closing his footlocker, he answered his door.

"Come in," Hogan yelled in his bass voice.

The door opened slightly and a prisoner of medium height and self-indulgent looks came in. Hogan could only sigh in relief for it was only Andrew Carter, his main man in working with the explosives. "Colonel Hogan, L-London just radioed a message here. K-Kinch said it was urgent and was a personal message for you. It's being decoded now."

"Thank you, Carter, I'll be done in a few minutes," Hogan answered, baffled about what could have been sent to him at such a time. He already heard news from home through his family letters only a few hours ago, censured as they may be, but what could London have for him that could be considered urgent to him? Hogan deliberated this over as he exited his quarters with Carter, and, watching for any guards around, tapped the bunk in the main room of the barracks that led to their complex tunnel system.

Carter followed his commanding officer down to the radio room, where his colleagues, James Kinchloe, Louis LeBeau and Peter Newkirk stood. _Boy, the Colonel isn't going to be happy with this message_, Carter thought and he knew what sadness this could cause him. Kinchloe, Kinch to everyone, already deciphered the message and read it to them before asking him to get Colonel Hogan, and then they knew, with certainty, that Colonel Hogan should be informed of this message even though it'll hurt him more than not receiving it.


	3. A Dreaded Feeling and Hope

Hogan was already aware of the sad faces that enveloped him as he reached the radio room of the tunnels. "What, no little smiling elves for Santa?" he joked to his men, causing them all to smile, but too quickly did they get down to the message that was just transmitted. Kinch was the one who felt the need to tell his commanding officer the news, as everyone agreed. The only black man out of Hogan's group of four, Kinch was already closer to Hogan than the other men and was also his right-hand man.

"Colonel Hogan, there is a personal message here for you from Headquarters in London," Kinch said, gulping as he ripped the message off from the clipboard. Newkirk and LeBeau cringed and, along with the already-leaving Kinch, motioned for Carter to step aside and make room for Colonel Hogan as he read the message. Carter obeyed them, only to watch, as the rest of them did as they exited the tunnels through the ladder to the barracks, the horror on their commanding officer's face as he read the note silently to himself.

_Monday, December 21, 1942_

_Colonel Robert E. Hogan, senior P.O.W. officer of Stalag 13 and former commander of the 504__th__ Bomber Squadron of the United States Army Air Force: urgent message, on a personal note, from Allied Headquarter, London ._

_As of Wednesday, June 17, 1942, Colonel Nikola Anna Michalovich, also of the United States Army, M*A*S*H 6147__th__ of London, had been assigned as agent for the Allied Forces and has been stationed in Paris, France with Major Nancy Sarah Donovan-White, a veteran of the United States Army. Both were on a mission six miles from Hammelburg with H8WC when they have been captured by German forces near the rocket base. The mission had been a failure for H8WC and needs to be completed as soon as possible. Colonel Michalovich and Major Donovan-White have been sent to a camp, the location known to London's Headquarters as of Friday, December 18, 1942, 0210 hours English time: Auschwitz camp in Poland. The Colonel, from our intelligence reports, is said to be wounded and in all possibility from a drawn medical prognosis, dying of lead poisoning._

_The mission, in which H8WC has failed to complete, is vital for your men and for the Allies. Reports will be sent later on the dynamics of the base and what should be done. The oil that was blown has been remade and needs to be destroyed before the Axis launch it. It is vital for you and your men to complete this mission._

Colonel Hogan couldn't read of the rest of the message anymore and didn't wish to care about what he and his men could do to complete this failed mission. He aimlessly dropped the paper to the floor, a slip of news that gently danced in the cold air of the tunnels before heading to its destination below.

His four men, who previously knew the news and probably debated whether or not to give it to him, had disappeared already and were most likely in the barracks, leaving Hogan space to vent his anguish and pain at his loss alone before even attempting to talk about his love. His thoughts even raced. _They have no idea who she is, the power she has already in this war and what effect she could have when she to a prison camp in Germany_._ There is no helping her escape now._ But instead of releasing his emotion, Hogan paced the small radio room and thought of his partner, his friend for life.

_She's got a ticket to ride and she don't care…_she wrote that to him one day, one lonely day when Hogan just got in this rat-hole, just a month after the Gestapo ran after him and successfully caught him near a farmer's barn, less than a mile away from where he crashed. It was the only letter Hogan had received from her when he was here at Stalag 13 and all it said was this poem, and the date, July 16, 1942, her twenty-ninth birthday, a day he appropriately noted in his mind.

That particular letter, from Paris, wasn't censured and blackened but already, the Germans were on his tail about the meaning of the letter, because all it contained was a poem and the possibilities of it being a coded message. The Gestapo had questioned him so many times about this note, especially their local man Major Hochstetter, but the Gestapo had received no information from him but his usual array of jokes and sarcastic remarks, so they took the original letter away from him, most likely for the file that they were creating. Even to Hogan the words were cryptic, and even that was apposite for the lovely colonel he loves.

Hogan already wrote her sad words and tucked it away below the pictures after Major Hochstetter finished his last interrogation with him a week after he received the letter. _It was almost as if she knew what I was feeling after I left._

Hogan stopped pacing the radio room and looked to see if any men were around, and to his surprise, there were none around still. Sighing, he sat down in the chair Kinch was just previously in and put his head in hands, knowing all too well the sudden pain in his heart that he felt because of this near-loss…or sudden loss if he didn't do _something_ to get her out of there. Hogan knew that she was a survivor and that if she could get through the tyranny of her childhood and the pain of losing everyone she loved and the relationship that they have had, then she could get through this…but this, _this_ was so different and much more dangerous. He felt the tears that threatened to come down before release themselves. Before he knew it, Hogan was sobbing for the love he was going to lose, something he knew as unusual of him. She _promised_ him that she'd stay away before he left._ "Rob, please, I couldn't, wouldn't do that…"_ she begged after she saw what pain it caused him when he even mentioned the possibility of her being caught by the Gestapo.

Hogan continued to cry, quieted down by a hope that she'll somehow get through this obstacle and somehow, sent through to a prison camp, any camp but _that _one. Nancy was with her and she was the great mentor to his love, she'll help in getting through in this game. Nancy always had a permanent hold on her and kept her out of trouble so far except in going to Paris with her, so perhaps the two will survive this together and somehow, be transferred or escape. However, it was no guarantee of endurance in the Nazi's game of war and what they could do a human being, even one as stubborn and ill-temper, but more loving and caring as Nikki Michalovich.

_Oh, Nikki, Nikki, Desertstar…how could you do this to yourself?_

It was the first time in months that Hogan even thought of her.


End file.
